Conventionally, many simple personal authentication methods for confirming the identity of a person use passwords, and users need to memorize their own passwords. For example, for an IC card (multi-application IC card) on which a plurality of applications are installed, a single user may set different password for different applications. In this case, the user needs to memorize a plurality of different passwords for different applications, and is likely to forget which of the passwords is required to be input to which of the applications.